Title: Happy Valentine's Day
Tags: Valentine's Day, DUCHESS,GAYKEYWEST, KEY WEST
Blog Entry: Happy Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is the second largest card sending and receiving day each year only surpassed by Christmas. One billion valentine cards are sent each year. In fact it is believed that the first greeting card ever send was a Valentine. The first written valentine is attributed to a young Frenchman, Charles, Duke of Orleans. From his whilst being held prisoner in the Tower of London. He fought his lonely confinement by writing romantic poems or rhymed love letters to his wife in France. About sixty of them remain. They can be seen among the royal papers in the British Museum. During the seventeenth century people made their own valentines using original verse or poems copied from booklets with appropriate verse. The Victorians took the cards to elaborate lengths, trimming them with lace, silks and satins and embellishing them with special details like feathers, flowers, Cupids and hearts, gold leaf, hand painted details and even sweetly perfumed sachets. The first commercial valentines appeared circa 1800 and were rather simplistic. Cards were hand-delivered. Until the mid-1800's, the cost of sending mail was beyond the means of the average person, and the recipient, not the sender, was expected to pay the cost of mailing. Cupid, the mischievous son of the Goddess of Love, Venus, is supposedly responsible for people falling in love. According to the myths, anyone being hit by Cupid's arrow falls in love with the first person he/she sees.
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